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news, events, and commentary from the Arts & Sciences Core CurriculumFri, 09 Dec 2016 16:43:18 +0000en-UShourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=4.1.12An Oddly Modern Antiquarian Bookshophttp://blogs.bu.edu/core/2013/04/23/an-oddly-modern-antiquarian-bookshop/
http://blogs.bu.edu/core/2013/04/23/an-oddly-modern-antiquarian-bookshop/#commentsTue, 23 Apr 2013 17:29:36 +0000http://blogs.bu.edu/core/?p=2472In an intriguing article for the New York Times, Jody Rosen discusses a fascinating but little-known bookstore called Monkey’s Paw, and gives ideas on how such businesses fit into today’s literary world. Here is an extract:

“Life-Spark Stories for the Intelligent Young.” Attributed to the author “R. K.,” it tells the story of a “bright little Life-Spark living in the heart of the great Lord-King of the Sun,” who comes down to earth and embarks on a series of adventures. The Life-Spark meets Mother Earth, Nurse Destiny and other deities; it changes form, inhabiting various plants and animals — a pansy, a dog named Gipsie, a little boy.
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The Monkey’s Paw specializes in oddities like “Life-Spark Stories”: printed matter that has fallen between history’s cracks and eluded even Google Books’ all-seeing eye. There are Victorian etiquette handbooks, antique sex manuals, obscure scientific treatises. There are forgotten 19th-century travelogues with sumptuous chromolithographs and leather-bound correspondence courses on fingerprinting.
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“This isn’t the store where you’ll find the book you were looking for,” Fowler says. “It’s the store where you’ll find the book you didn’t know you were looking for.”
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You could also say that the Monkey’s Paw is an idea masquerading as a bookshop. It’s a cross between a retail establishment and a conceptual art installation, which upends traditional book-trade values and views the literary canon through a cracked lens. It’s a bookstore that argues that bookstores are, by definition, Dickensian old curiosity shops. “Most booksellers can’t adjust to the postprint era,” Fowler says. “The only way to sell books in the 21st-century is as artifacts. I’m a 20th-century person myself, but with Monkey’s Paw, I’ve tried to adapt. This place is a church of print. It’s just that the old rules are a bit scrambled.”

Upon its release, it was controversial and supposedly caused a ‘riot’ in the Parisian premiere audience… This debated topic is discussed in an article by Tom Service of The Guardian titled The Rite of Spring- the Work of a Madman.Here is a sample:

“Mild protests against the music,” wrote Stravinsky, “could be heard from the beginning.” The composer was remembering the night of 29 May 1913 at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in Paris. The event was the premiere of a new ballet called The Rite of Spring – and, if you believe all the stories about what happened that celebrated evening, not least the one about the riot that ensued, it’s as if the 20th century only really got going when the audience in that gilded art-nouveau auditorium started kicking off.

The Core encourages students to join the BU Art History Association on a trip to MassMoca on Saturday March 2nd. MassMoca is one of the largest centers for contemporary visual and performing arts in the country (for their official site, visit http://bit.ly/XwXaBv).

The cost of the trip is $10 and includes transportation, guided tour, and box lunch. The event is open to all students, but spots must be reserved in advance at http://bit.ly/12u32uS. Buses will leave from the GSU at 9 AM sharp and will return to BU around 7 PM.

This promises to be a fantastic experience!

]]>http://blogs.bu.edu/core/2013/02/12/massmoca-trip-in-march/feed/0Twists on John Keatshttp://blogs.bu.edu/core/2013/02/07/twists-on-john-keats/
http://blogs.bu.edu/core/2013/02/07/twists-on-john-keats/#commentsThu, 07 Feb 2013 21:13:55 +0000http://blogs.bu.edu/core/?p=2088The Core presents a poem by Dan Beachy-Quick titled The Cricket and The Grasshopper, named after the poem by Romantic poet John Keats, whose work is studied in the CC202 Core class. Here is the Dan B-Q poem:

The senseless leaf in the fevered hand
Grows hot, near blood-heat, but never grows
Green. Weeks ago the dove’s last cooing strain
Settled silent in the nest to brood slow
Absence from song. The dropped leaf cools
On the uncut grass, supple still, still green,
Twining still these fingers as they listless pull
The tangle straight until the tangle tightens
And the hand is caught, another fallen leaf.
The poetry of the earth never ceases
Ceasing — one blade of grass denies belief
Until its mere thread bears the grasshopper’s
Whole weight, and the black cricket sings unseen,
Desire living in a hole beneath the tangle’s green.

To bring to attention the references that Dan B-Q makes, here is John Keat’s poem of the same name:

The poetry of earth is never dead:
When all the birds are faint with the hot sun,
And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run
From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead:
That is the grasshopper’s — he takes the lead
In summer luxury, — he has never done
With his delights, for when tired out with fun,
He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed.
The poetry of earth is ceasing never:
On a lone winter evening, when the frost
Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills
The Cricket’s song, in warmth increasing ever,
And seems to one in drowsiness half lost,
The Grasshopper’s among some grassy hills.

]]>http://blogs.bu.edu/core/2013/02/07/twists-on-john-keats/feed/0Analects of the Core: Montaigne on fearhttp://blogs.bu.edu/core/2013/01/16/michel-de-montaigne-on-fear/
http://blogs.bu.edu/core/2013/01/16/michel-de-montaigne-on-fear/#commentsWed, 16 Jan 2013 16:15:32 +0000http://blogs.bu.edu/core/?p=1969The Core wishes students and faculty a very fruitful and enjoyable New Year and semester, and welcomes everyone back to the trials and tribulations of intellectual life.

To boost students’ courage for the coming months, and instill some Core spirit, here is today’s analect:

The Core Curriculum and the Department of Classical Studies invite you to consider studying with us this summer in Athens, Greece.

The program will consist of two courses to be taught on the beautiful campus of Deree: The American College of Greece, situated in the Agia Paraskevi suburb of Athens. Students will study the Greek language as well as one course in Greek culture and history. The Greek language course will be taught by a Boston University faculty member and the other course by a faculty member from Deree.

Students will live in the modern residence complex of Deree. Deree’s apartment-style residences feature fully equipped kitchens, marble bathrooms and floors, huge furnished outdoor balconies, complimentary on-site laundry facilities, complimentary fitness center in main building, a quiet study area, outdoor area in back for relaxing, and large lobby with TV, DVDs and games for casual group gatherings. The study abroad special program fee includes a double bedroom in Deree’s apartment-style residence shared with another student. Students can choose to upgrade to a private bedroom within a shared apartment or private studio apartment for an additional fee.

In addition to study in Athens, students will make between two and four excursions to other cultural or historical sites in Greece.

The cost for the academic program will be approximately $3000 (not including excursion fees and airfare). We estimate the complete cost of the program (including travel etc.) to be in the neighborhood of $5,000 to 5,500 (excluding food). However, the Boston University Philhellenes organization, the Department of Classical Studies, and the NEH Distinguished Teaching Professor are raising funds for scholarships to defray the costs of this program. Core students will be eligible to apply for scholarships early next semester. We hope that the scholarships will reduce the cost of the program by about 50%.

If you are interested in this program, please let us know in January when you return to campus. The deadline for applying for scholarships to the program will probably be in mid February.